


the ever-changing nature of the world

by anjalikaastras



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M, this was a dumb fanfic originally conceived as a bday present
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-25 13:36:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20026690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anjalikaastras/pseuds/anjalikaastras
Summary: Crowley, Aziraphale, and a trio of disconnected happenings that end up with unlikely conclusions.





	the ever-changing nature of the world

“Was I wrong ?”

The demon‘s tail curls around the halfeaten apple. It looks altogether forlorn and lost — something very rare indeed for a demon.

Aziraphale watches the shimmering of emerald scales on crimson, shiny apple-flesh. To him, temptation sloughs off them, evil in a glitzy, glittering facade, but to a human, they must have been mesmerising, beautiful, almost divine.

Job protocol says _Ye shalt not speak unto a dæmon lest it be for purposes of reproach_, words the principality’s stuck firmly to for the moment, but job protocol also says _The lord is my shepherd...he restoreth my soul..._ and several other verses about guiding lost souls.

_Demons don’t have souls to begin with,_ he tries to convince himself, but then he thinks of fire and brimstone and twisted features that had once been His favourite.

The serpent demon’s not remained stationary, having opted to change into the form of a young man. The apple still in hand, he leans against the bark of a tree nearby.

The angel makes up his mind and speaks to the serpent demon, whose ophidian orbs seem startled at his reply.

“No, I don’t quite think so. Telling right from wrong’s never a bad thing. This must be part of the Plan, I’m sure.”

Angels and demons all have their own parts to play in it, he reassures himself. Even this one.

“Ssso, your consssspicuously absssent sssword is part of the Plan too ?”

Aziraphale opens his mouth, remembers he doesn’t really have to justify himself, and then decides to justify himself anyways.

“I couldn’t stand seeing that one just have to leave, you see — she was all naked and cold and she’d be hungry, without the food here.”

There is a pause, and then a query in an odd voice.

“Was that bad ?”

Of him, or of Him ?

“You’re an angel. Doubt you could do anything bad.”

A droplet of rain smacks the ground between them. The demon straightens, glances furtively about for shelter that’s more than a tree.

He finds it in a feathered plume of white stretched over his head, and chuckles.

“Crawly. Not much of a name, really, but ‘Serpent of Eden’ ‘s a mouthful, and hardly a real name, too.”

The angel smiles.

“Aziraphale.”

It’s not much for a first meeting, especially when Crawly slips away the minute Aziraphale’s eyes turn from him, but it is something that makes Crawly — well, now Crowley — later wonder if a Bigger Man Slightly Higher Upstairs has decided in a perverse, sick joke to tie them together and see what becomes of it. Because of that moment that an angel and demon shared neutral words.

The main reason why he’s thinking this, you see, is because the year is 1667, the Black Plague is running rampant, and the lazy village of Eyam is the last place he expects to find Aziraphale.

It began with some cloth infested with fleas and before he realises, the stench of death is in the air and he’s been given orders to make sure the disease wipes out the tiny town. It’s a little bit of chaos, but chaos is chaos for those Below.

Eyam is small and unimportant enough that he was sure it would be ignored, but still —

— In any case, no one ever said Crowley was impolite.

“Angel.”

Aziraphale, in the guise of a kindly old doctor, straightens from where a soft glow of light blankets a woman on the bed, her body suffused with telltale sores and boils. The Black Death cannot affect them, nonhuman as they are, but it leaves its scorching sable scratches in the ravaged region around them, transforming idyllic peace into sick-smelling horror.

It is a vigil of sorts, for the last one of the household. She has carried out her own death watches for the boys she birthed and the husband she loved, and now they have all taken to death, she lies weak on sheets dampened by the sweat of the dying.

“Crowley.”

It is hardly their second meeting, but previous times involved religious conflicts or particularly pivotal moments in history, like the Holy Inquisition (better not to remember that, actually) and it had made sense that Heaven and Hell would send someone there to tip a few scales. But this means nothing — this is a place that doesn’t have much stake in the Plan and the ongoing Conflict.

As if reading his thoughts, Aziraphale lets out a sigh.

“Couldn’t really help it, seeing them all in this kind of pain — you know, they even sent out the children and made sure nothing could go in or out. Someone should look over them, at least.”

Just like thousands of years ago, in a garden of eternal spring-summer, in a paradise that is lost to humans forever.

Crowley could laugh.

There’s a droplet of rain that smatters down, sluicing across a stone in unequal dashes, and since they both appear in human forms, Aziraphale glances around, furtively, searching for anything to cover himself.

—A black umbrella extends over him, and there is silence.

And really, neither of them have a clue when and why It happens, but It happens as ineffably as the rise of the morning sun. One day the weather outside is warm and in his London apartment, there are birds chirping outside the window, and a warm presence awfully close to him.

If there was any other demon in his place, they’d have kicked Aziraphale out of it and demanded he engage in combat, and if there was any angel in Aziraphale’s place, they’d have done quite a lot of smiting.

But it isn’t unpleasant.

So he closes his eyes again, and the man in a suit and sunglasses sleeps next to the slightly frumpy bookstore owner, and for a moment, it is easy to forget both of them are the furthest thing from human they can be.

They don’t “go out” or “date” as humans do. It’s odd enough making anything work when every religious text says you should be trying to actively mince each other to pieces, but then for the both of you the only mincing going on is the occasional mincemeat pie (decidedly for the demon, never the angel who loves life so).

But somehow one of them will walk into a room and see his houseplants newly watered, aglow with something he could call _heavenly_, and another time one of them will call up the waiter and ask for a second helping of dessert, then pointedly leave it on the other’s plate ; sometimes there is a rare book that can’t possibly have been gotten through easy means on the desk, other times there is a brand-new sparkle on a vintage 1926 Bentley that has been very obviously hand polished.

(Something impossible with man is possible for God.)

But somehow nightingales are singing in Berkeley Square.

In the end they are whatever this is, and this is love enough, _ineffable_ enough, for them.

**Author's Note:**

> a fic to just get myself in the spirit of writing ineffable husbands.


End file.
